The 20p newspaper, which launched in October 2010 with an initial circulation of 133,472, has seen its sales grow by 123% according to the latest national newspaper ABCs.

In addition, i's 32.8% growth since February 2012 makes it the only daily to increase circulation over the past year, offseting the decline of The Independent, which suffered a 40.5% year-on-year drop in its figures, the worst decline across all daily newspapers.

However, these figures were not as damning for The Independent as August 2012, when the daily title experienced a year-on-year 54.3% cut its circulation.

Overall, daily nationals experienced a year-on-year decline of 8.4%, with national morning quality, the category under which i falls, experiencing the smallest drop in that period of 5.9%.

In the Sunday newspaper forum, circulation of The Sun on Sunday has dropped below 2m for only the second time since its February 2012 launch.

The News International title recorded an average weekly circulation of 1.9m throughout February 2013, down 4.9% from the previous month (2m).

Circulation dropped to 1.9m first in December 2012, the lowest distribution figures recorded for the national Sunday popular newspaper, created in lieu of the defunct News of the World.

The latest figures reflect a 40.5% drop in circulation since the title’s first month of trade, at which point around 3.2m copies were distributed on average.

But the addition of the title to the market has helped offset declines across all Sunday nationals, which saw a net circulation decrease of only 0.1% despite widespread double-digit drops elsewhere.

In its latest quarterly results, News International credited the paper with offsetting the huge legal bills still brought by ongoing investigations into the News of the World hacking scandal.

However, the Sunday newspaper and its weekly counterpart, The Sun, continued to be the highest circulating Sunday and daily papers, despite The Sun’s distribution figures dropping 11% year-on-year to 2.3m in February 2013.

Meanwhile, The Guardian fell below 200,000 average daily copies sold for the first time since records began, reported Brand Republic. It follows the first full month in which the daily and its Saturday counterpart increased their cover prices by 20p.